Zack Ford at ThinkProgress reports the Reddit eruption about two students at Celina High School in Ohio who celebrated “Twin Day” with
T-shirts that read “Lesbian 1″ and “Lesbian 2.” Although they were forced to remove them, 20 more students went to school Tuesday wearing home-made T-shirts in sympathy, organized by sophomore Jimmy Walter.

Metz, top, and Luebke,who didn't get thememo about stateschools not allowedto be"enclaves oftotalitarianism."

Assistant Principal Phil Metz forced all the students to remove the shirts because they were “political,” and those who did not were given detention with the threat of suspension.

Erick Warrner, a Celina
junior who brought attention to this situation on Reddit,
points out that plenty of “political” dress is regularly tolerated at
the school, including “Students for Life” anti-choice T-shirts with
pictures of fetuses, as well as blatantly political shirts supporting
Mitt Romney for President or calling President Obama a socialist. In
fact, just this week the school hosted a Romney campaign event at which Paul Ryan spoke.

Metz and Principal Jason Luebke haven't responded,
but evidently they didn't get the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines
memo from the Supreme Court forbidding state-operated schools from being "enclaves of totalitarianism.”

Deb Fischer claims she strengthened eminent domain with a bill when
she was a state senator. In fact, she had an opportunity to ensure
landowners had the upper hand when facing eminent domain, and instead
she did nothing to define the word pipeline and did nothing to provide
guidance for a public process over eminent domain power. Deb Fischer’s bill actually put into law that wind companies could
not use eminent domain but oil pipeline companies could use eminent
domain for private gain. Because of Fischer's lack of vision on that eminent domain law, any pipeline carrying oil, tarsands or even toxic waste could claim eminent domain using her bill as the legal standing. Today, it's a Canadian
company who many of us see as "friendly." Tomorrow, under Fischer's eminent domain bill, it could be China or Iraq.

We suppose it's close to cruel to taunt New Englanders with a photo of a dry roadbed (this one taken just north of Omaha in the Ponca Hills) but the particular curse inflicted this year by nature in the middle of the country is a severe and ongoing drought.
Well, it's a curse if you grow corn or soybeans. Pumpkin farmers are enjoying bumper crops, according to Bloomberg:

The orange vegetable is usually planted from late May to early July and
harvested in late September or early October. This year’s drought
included the warmest weather since 1936 in Illinois, the largest U.S.
grower of corn and soybeans after Iowa.
Field conditions began deteriorating in June, and by July more than 95
percent of the state was experiencing a severe drought, according to the
Drought Monitor in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Scott Raynor reports that two Iowa City residents got escorted out of a Romney Rally in Cedar Rapids. Independent Romney supporter Chase Gundersen and his friend, Independent Obama supporter Adam Peters, said because they are gay, they were told to leave and threatened with arrest.
The Romney campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul told U.S. News and World
Report that Peters was thrown out because he's a known disruptive
protester.
"We were informed by people on the ground that this gentleman was a
known protester who has caused issues at previous events," Saul wrote in
an email to U.S. News and World Report. "So [we] had him escorted off
the premises to prevent any disruptions." Peters described the incident on his Facebook page, denying he was a protester. In it he wondered if they were given a bum's rush because they looked "gay." After seeing one of the people who sell T-shirts at Romney/Ryan rallies, AKSARBENT has its doubts about this.

I appreciate that, but the question was, is money in politics inherently corrupting?And I said no. Who does it corrupt for doing what? I don’t know what that would be.I guess my point was corruption of the process.It doesn’t corrupt the process. It’s necessary for the process. To communicate, you have to spend money, so you have to have money to communicate, see, and that’s called speech.You look at campaign finance, and it’s this thing you’ve spent literally your whole life on, your whole career on. The average voter reads the stories about it and watches the ads that come as a result of it. What do you think voters think about all of this? Can you blame them for sort of being turned off by the whole thing?Voters in the United States have always had a healthy skepticism about government and politicians, and I think it’s a good thing. … But the problem we have is we don’t have enough information available to voters to allow them to make informed choices, so we need more spending.With all the ads and the news, you think there’s not enough information out there in American politics?Definitely. If a third of the people in the United States cannot name the vice president of the United States, a majority of the people do not know who their congressman is or who their senators are, so you think that’s enough information? No. That’s not enough information. They need a lot more information.Do you think people should care about where this money’s coming from?Generally no, because it’s the message. You know, you either buy the argument or don’t buy the argument. Generally no, it doesn’t matter. Truth doesn’t change because of who’s funding it.I don’t even know what to say. You actually think that?I actually think that the truth doesn’t change based on who’s funding it. John Gregg is either a pro-life [candidate] or not. What difference does it make who’s funding that? The truth doesn’t change. What they say may change, but the truth of whether he is or not — and by the way, he is pro-life — he’s a Democrat running for governor. Whether he is or not doesn’t change by who’s funding the message on that.Should citizens in this country be able to find that information? Should they be able to learn who’s funding?Not generally. They don’t care.That’s not the question. Just because they don’t care doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be able to know, right?No. I’m sorry. Well, then are you’re just patronizing them? Sorry, you ignorant Hoosiers, you should want to know this. Well, actually they could[n't] care less because it’s not relevant to them. It’s not relevant.You’re the one who said they shouldn’t know because they don’t care, right, and my question is —No, I said they shouldn’t be told or shouldn’t be disclosed. I forget how you put the question, but to be clear on what I meant, things shouldn’t be required based on voter information, which is the only justification for disclosure that’s ever been upheld, if they don’t care. It’s not relevant to them.What does that say about democracy, though?It says that this is completely irrelevant information that only some left-wing nut jobs care about. That’s the bottom line. And they also care about it because they know that it undermines people’s participation that they don’t want to be participating, because they don’t care.

GoodAsYou has published NOM's latest martyr video, starring Dakota Ary, the Ft. Worth Christer high-schooler who says he was victimized by a gay-agenda teacher, but who some people say was gay-baiting his instructor and was sitting, with his homies, next to a bulletin board picture from Stern (it was German class) right before it was ripped mysteriously ripped down.

Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters said Liberty Counsel, an activist Christer legal organization which likes to sue gay-friendly schools and which represented Ary, lied about the incident.
The Dallas Voice talked to Marvin Vann, a member of the group LGBTQ S.A.V.E.S., formed to protect LGBT students and teachers in Tarrant County from anti-gay harassment, and got quite a different story quite different from Dakota Ary's:

I and other members of LGBTQ S.A.V.E.S., a group formed a year ago in response to local and national incidents of school-based, anti-LGBTQ incidents of harassment, became aware of this incident last week, shortly after the first, distorted media reports came out. Concerned that only one side of the incident was being reported, we met Friday night with Mr. Franks. His account contradicts Ary and his lawyer’s version of events, and has been substantiated by several of the other students in class at the time. We found Mr. Franks’ explanation entirely credible. He reports (and has reported to his school) repeated acts of anti-gay harassment by several students that occurred this and last year, including by a group of four specific boys in this class, of whom Ary is one. Among other incidents, Mr. Franks maintains a “word wall” for his German IV class on which he posts articles and images from several journals, including the German magazine, Stern. One of these articles concerned gay rights in Germany, and included a photo of two men kissing. The group of four boys concerned was sitting near this image immediately before Mr. Franks found it had been ripped from the wall. The student and his lawyer are now asserting that including this photo among the others constituted his teacher’s “imposing acceptance of homosexuality” in his classroom. These students subsequently took every opportunity to denounce homosexuality in class, frequently without context; that is, with the topic having otherwise been broached. On the particular day in which this incident occurred, Mr. Franks was opening class when the topic of Christianity in Germany was broached by one student, who asked what churches were there, another whether they read the Bible in English, etc. Franks asserts that the topic of homosexuality was not broached in any way, and that Ary‘s assertions to the contrary are entirely false. At this point, Ary declared, with a class audience, “Gays can’t be Christians; homosexuality is wrong,” looking directly at Mr. Franks. Franks says he understands and affirms students’ right to free speech, and that he is perfectly prepared to lead a respectful discussion on topics such as gay rights that allows for the assertion of opinions with which he disagrees. He has led such discussion in the past in his sociology classes. But in this case, hr feels the context makes it clear that this remark was made ad hominem, aimed specifically at him to devalue him and any information he might share on the topic of religion, on the basis of his perceived sexual orientation.

Via Brad Chapin (whose affecting testimony last spring in favor of Lincoln's short-lived LGBT anti-bias law (at about the 10 minute mark here) was a welcome counterpoint to the stunningly blatant lie of a Catholic priest in the first part of the video) comes the news that Lisbeth Meléndez Rivera, a longtime LBGT and labor organizer of some
note who has been effective enough to receive Human Rights Campaign funding, will speak at a PFLAG meeting Thursday, November 8, 2012 in Omaha:

She
is a phenomenal sociologist, biologist, and activist, educating the
country about how important our roles as allies and members of the
Latino LGBT community really are.This is about moving people to create
permanent and positive changes in Omaha and Lincoln by promoting
acceptance for ALL LGBT individuals and their families. Within the
Latino LGBT community, we may sometimes assume that LGBT identities
cannot exist in harmony with religious and cultural ideals, but Lisbeth
empowers us to see just how possible this really is and what we can do
to make Omaha LGBT communities and families even stronger when faith, la
familia, and culture collide.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Alex Greenwich, the former convener of Australian Marriage Equality
(AME), won the seat of Sydney on Saturday. Greenwich married his partner in Argentina in May.More than 48 per cent of voters chose Mr Greenwich in
as independent MP for Sydney in Saturday's poll, with the Clover Moore-backed candidate finishing with a
two-party preferred vote of just under 65 per cent. The result was a
stinging defeat for the O'Farrell government and its candidate Shayne
Mallard.

Gallup thinks, in an election this close, they certainly could. Right here in Omaha, where most Nebraska gay people live, Obama was able to capture an electoral vote in 2008, the first time any Democratic presidential candidate has picked up electoral support in the Cornhusker state since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide, almost half a century ago.
Nebraska has been able to split its electoral votes since 1991 and did so for the first time when Obama picked up Omaha in the second congressional district. Only Maine also allows split electoral votes, and in the same way: whoever carries the state gets the two "Senate" electoral votes, but congressional district electoral votes go to the candidate who won the district. This is why Omaha is now called "Blue Dot City" by political strategists.

Why in the World-Herald would a
newspaper which endorses political
candidates own a large interest in a
vote-counting company?
Unseemly, much?

The company is ES&S, which tabulates votes for about 4,000 election authorities in 41 states with more than 300,000 units deployed and counting about 60% of US votes.
In 2004, Ronnie Dugger, writing in The Nation, said the Omaha World-Herald, now backing Republicans Mitt Romney (President) and Deb Fischer (Senate) owned "about half" of ES&S.
AKSARBENT could find no current statements about W-H ownership more specific than "minority," which could mean, of course, as much as 49.99%.

Mugshot of ES&S Senior Vice President
of Marketing and Public Relations, John Groh

In New York, in 2010, WNYC reported that tests on an ES&S electronic voting machine that recorded shockingly high
numbers of extra votes in the 2010 election show that overheating may
have caused upwards of 30 percent of the votes in a South Bronx voting
precinct to go uncounted.

This is difficult enough to watch on YouTube; AKSARBENT can't understand how 1,000 way-too-easily-amused Council Bluffs women were able to sit through so witless a travesty in real time long enough to watch Dr. Ty Dworak win. That money for charity was raised does not begin to excuse the event's excruciating awfulness.

Today's Outside The Box column has some counterintuive insight from meteorologist Eric Holthauson the Hurricane Sandy Frankenstorm facing New York City:

...Normally, when hurricanes approach the East Coast from Sandy’s angle,
they are pulled safely out to sea by a semi-permanent low-pressure
center near Iceland. This time around, that low pressure isn’t there. In
fact, it’s been replaced by a high pressure so intense it only occurs
approximately 0.2% of the time on average.

The coincidence of that strong of a high pressure “block” being in place
just when a hurricane is passing by — in and of itself a very rare
occurrence — is just mind bogglingly rare. It’s the kind of stuff that’s
important enough to rewrite meteorological textbooks. The result:
Instead of heading out to sea Sandy’s full force will be turned back
against the grain and directed squarely at the East Coast.

Friday, October 26, 2012

From Mashable: Bulgarian blogger Bogomil Shopov that he had purchased a spreadsheet containing 1.1 million Facebook
user IDs and email addresses for $5. The data was allegedly scraped by
third-party applications and offered for sale on a website called
Gigbucks by a user named “mertem.” Shopov verified that the emails did
correspond to the Facebook user IDs, most of them private. He had even
identified people he knew in the list. The next day, he was contacted by Facebook’s Platform Policy Team.

The National Organization for Marriage, which pledged up to $100,000 to the Trash-David-Wiggins bus tour of Bob Vander Plaats and Tamara Scott (see videos below) has released a new antigay video that is so full of shit that it took AFER over 4 1/2 minutes to deconstruct all the homophobic slurs, misrepresentations of social science and outright inventions, like "natural marriage."

Here are two videos about the character assassination initiatives of Iowa for Freedom during its crusade to destabilize Iowa's judiciary by abusing the judicial retention process.

On Nov. 1 at 6 am, two new Omaha-area standalone Chick-fil-A restaurants (there are now two limited-service locations in the Mutual of Omaha Dome and Mutual Bank) will open, in Papillion at 8710 S. 71st Plaza, operated by Kyle Schisler and in Bellevue at
2016 Cornhusker Road, operated by Tom Deall. The first 100 heterosexual supremacists customers in line will get free Chick-fil-A for a year (52 free meal cards). If there are more than 100 in line, a raffle will be held.

(Via The New Civil Rights Movement)

Both locations will have "fall festival-themed" (Oh look! Christers want to redefine Halloween!) activities for overnight campers,
including games, music, prizes for costumes and tent-to-tent
trick-or-treating.
Privately-held Chick-fil-A hasn't released 2012 sales figures yet,
but consumer use of the chain was up 2.2 percent in the third quarter
compared with the same period in 2011, according to a Sandelman & Associates survey of more
than 30,000 fast-food consumers conducted in markets where Chick-fil-A
is located.
Market share was up 0.6 percent, and total ad awareness was up 6.5 percent.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Deb Fischer, the Nebraska GOP candidate for Senate who is long on feel-good conservative bullet points and short on vision has now flip-flopped from her 2004 position on the issue of a woman's right to choose not to carry the baby of a rapist to term. (Story here.)
She also doesn't believe in Global Warming, despite the increasing regularity of weather extremes characteristic of that phenomenon, including record drought here in Nebraska.
Oh — and she underhandedly snuck in a loophole in legislation which confers eminent domain privileges on pipeline companies but not wind energy companies.
Really.
The Nebraska GOP has never made it easier to justify a vote for Bob Kerrey.

Related: Reddit Donate spurns PayPal for donations, goes with Iowa-based Dwolla in partnership with another payment startup called Stripe.

PayPal, Ebay's payment unit, buoyed third quarter results of its parent by ending the quarter with 117.4 million active registered accounts, a 14% increase
over the third quarter of 2011. Revenue increased 23% year over year and
net total payment volume (TPV) grew 20% year over year to $35.2 billion.
But the Omaha World-Herald says the company is celebrating that performance by cutting about 3% of its workforce (up to 400 jobs out of 13,000) to trim costs, according to an unnamed source.

PayPal is eliminating jobs primarily in its product and technology groups... [President David] Marcus, who took over in April, is leading an overhaul to streamline a business marked by excessive meetings and a monthslong project-approval process. He started the makeover in June by consolidating nine product groups into one. Workers also will be reorganized — moved from walled cubicles and offices to open rooms, where management will sit among staff. “We have told PayPal employees about plans under way to strengthen and simplify how we create and deliver consistently great products and brand experiences to our customers,” PayPal said in a statement. “We have not yet discussed how these plans may impact any existing jobs across our product, technology and marketing teams.”

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

AKSARBENT loves this story because it gives us another excuse to post our video exposing the hypocrisy of the leaders of the Iowa Family Leader before getting into the deceptions of one of the organization's staffers, now running for office.

Below, Matt Reisetter attacks his opponent for trying to tack on an amendment (S-5030 to amendment S-5004 (H.F. 589)) to Iowa's infamous "Ag Gag" law, passed last session, which would imprison people who document animal cruelty undercover in agricultural production facilities in the state. To mitigate this free reign to abuse animals, an amendment was proposed to require oversight of animal treatment in such facilities via internet-connected security cameras for review by state officials to safeguard against abuse. It was defeated and the Ag Gag law, which Reisetter evidently supports, was passed. Now, in Iowa, livestock owners can engage in practically any degree of sadism they wish, and can get outsiders who bust them put behind bars. The law, which impinges on press freedom, has been called unconstitutional.

Last night I, and several other of our members, were able to attend the League of Women Voters candidate forum.
We also had the opportunity to write several questions (although only a
few were asked, and even then not the way we wrote them). What we took
away was that many Republicans were not willing to honestly answer these
questions. In particular, Matt Reisetter was very dodgy on his record
and his stance of several issues. We all know he worked on the Family
Leader campaign to oust 3 Iowa Supreme Court justices in 2010, yet when
asked about the current retention vote he declined to give a straight
forward answer. Further, when asked about a personhood amendement which
would outlaw birth control, he gave a non-committal response about
leaving it to the people.

...This week we start with a tape from an event Reisetter put on entitled “Homosexuality: Is it okay to be gay?” During this event Reisetter admits
outright to using unnecessary scare tactics, compares consensual homosexuality to statutory rape and smoking, and decides that, despite all applicable research, gender is a hard dichotomy and homosexuality is a choice. Watch the full video of this here:

“Social
scientists, pagans and Christians alike agree the healthiest
environment for the next generation to be raised in is an environment
where there's one mom who’s married, who’s a woman. Who’s married to one
man. You see social development, academic performance, suicide rates,
poverty...everything about a one man one woman household where kids are
raised pins the chart as far as health of the next generation.”

First of all, there is an entire division of pagan scientists which
are actively coming up with data which is qualitatively different than
the Christian ones? This is news to me. Second of all, no they don’t.
The American Psychological Association, the American Sociological
Association, the American Anthropological Association, and the American
Academy of Pediatrics are in disagreement with Matt’s assertion just to
name a few. Professor Judith Stacey of New York University stated: “Rarely is there as much consensus in any area of social science as in the case of gay parenting, which is why the American Academy of Pediatrics
and all of the major professional organizations with expertise in child
welfare have issued reports and resolutions in support of gay and
lesbian parental rights”. So that claim is not just a half truth, it’s
outright fallacious...

Audience Member: What about evidence that says it isn’t a choice, that you’re born with it?Matt: The evidence there is not even close. Your sociology professor telling you that maybe? You might be reading it somewhere.

Yes
Matt, we’re reading it somewhere. In peer-reviewed journals and text
books. In reports from major medical organizations. You know...places
where you find evidence.

“Where
does it stop? [...] By logical reasonable outgrowth of people who
support same sex marriage, you’ve got to support polygamy, you’ve got to
support man-boy relationships with NAMBLA (the National American Man
Boy Love Association) they’re advancing that cause right now.”

[During Q&A]

Cody: I thought it was very curious that you were trying
to throw [NAMBLA] in there as a scare tactic and I wanted to address it
and ask why you brought up NAMBLA when I think we can all come to the
consensus that NAMBLA is somewhat different than consensual male to male
or female to female relationships. Matt: I think you’re right, I think I’m probably using that as a scare tactic and I’m being honest.

Reisetter willingly admits he misled the audience to make his point. Do we really want this man representing Cedar Falls?

“Public
health, this is a new one. The CDC released two studies. One says
smokers are 10 to 20 times more likely to contract or die from lung
cancer. They also put out a study that says men that participate in anal
sex are 40 times more likely than women to contract HIV/AIDS. What does
that have to do with anything? State legislatures in the last two years
around the country have been banning smoking. Why? Because of public
health. Because we don’t want people contracting and dying of lung
cancer. We want to put a dent in the people who are smoking. At the same
time, in Iowa at least, they’ve been blessing same sex marriage thereby
giving an indirect approval of a behavior which is more dangerous by
the statistics than smoking.”

Mr. Reisetter was pressed on this issue during the Q&A more than
any other and Reisetter repeatedly back pedaled...Two students named Joe and Cory pressed him on the issue..

Joe:
Going back to the anal sex/HIV correlation. The argument is likely to
come out from under it because you don’t get HIV from having anal sex.
HIV is contracted by being exposed to someones DNA that contains HIV. It
doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you have anal sex.Matt: Um...okay. Touche. But there’s still a strong correlation right? Joe: More than likely it’s because of having promiscuous sex.Matt: Yes. [...]Cory:
So why are you opposed to a measure that would increase monogamy among
homosexual males and thus decrease the overall transmission? Matt:
Because homosexual males by in large are not really interested in
marriage. Homosexual females are more interested in marriage than
homosexual males by far. Am I right?*Crowd groans*Female student: Can you give us some research on that?Matt: I don’t have it in front of me right now.Female student: Yeah...that sucks doesn’t it.

Crow concluded: This video
is in stark contrast to what Mr. Reisetter presented himself as last
night. Matt never once answered a direct question on his stance on
social issues. I think the implications within this video are clear,
however. He is willing to lie, manipulate, and misrepresent in order to
perpetuate his rigid social agenda. Matt Reisetter is not a good choice
for Iowa...

1953: The first James Bond novel and the first issue of Playboy were published. Unions were growing, and the average house cost $9,950, a car $1650 and the first color TVs $1,175.
It was the McCarthy era, when gay people were considered security risks and it wasn't safe to take a photo of you and your boyfriend to the drugstore to be developed.
But there were photobooths...
Via Buzzfeed comes this nifty evidence of gay ingenuity from ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives:

Or they could have borrowed one of those new Polaroids from a funny uncle. (The first model, the 95, was made from 1948 to 1953.)

AKSARBENT supposes that if the protagonist handled his religious problem by renouncing God the advertisers would rebel, so instead, the show encourages Catholics to rebel, in this clip featuring The Hip Padre.

I have pretty much done them all except kill someone and covet my neighbor's wife.Well, contrary to popular opinion, being gay isn't a sin. The church is not antigay.Yet any chance he gets, the pope treats gay marriage like Amanda Bynes treats pedestrians.Eh, the pope. C'mon — haven't ya ever had a lovable old uncle who popped off intolerant comments at a family barbecue?Can't you get fired for saying stuff like that?I don't know if you noticed, but it's pretty hard to get fired around here.

Before introducing Paul Ryan, Iowa Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds trash-talked President Obama a little,
claiming he has "no style." Fortunately for Council Bluffs Republicans with similar issues, a GOP
Romney/Ryan fashion consultant — seen here expertly sizing up a prospect
— was able to lend a hand.

Ryan got a little snarky with a Cub Scout at the 1:07 mark:

...Right here at Bass Pro. It's where we take our kids to teach them values...I see a Cub Scout right here. What are you, a bear, wolf, bobcat?I can't see, buddy.You're WEBELO!Oh, hey! Sorry, I didn't mean to imply an emotion.

Wednesday: Iowa Family leader candidate doesn't want to talk about his homophobic college appearance.

This contemptible game has blown up since its August release, now closing in on 20,000,000 downloads to mostly preteen boys. Since many of the install­ments in the Battle Bears series are free, in-game advertising accounts for half the revenue of the company, SkyVu Entertainment — for now.
But soon the not-so-subtle antigay subtext of the game will be rewiring the brains of young boys on children's TV too, with action figures and toys not far behind. Hey GLAAD, did you forget to set your alarm clock?

SkyVu Entertainment facebook page shows
a happy employee sporting a shirt depicting
one of the company's pink bear villains with
its head shot off and spewing rainbow guts.

Battle Bears is the story of a band of teddy-bear soldiers that roams
the galaxy on a quest to rid it of danger — most notably Huggables.
Bright pink and cuddly on the outside, Huggables just want to smother
your character — literally — with love.
When Huggables are shot with any of the wide array of Battle Bears weapons, they burst forth with rainbows rather than blood.

Michael Polis, the president of Wildbrain said, “Between its built-in
fan base and the expandable universe that lends itself to consumer
products and character-driven extensions, Battle Bears has the potential
to become the next big boys action comedy brand.”
The TV show’s plot is expected to follow the lives of six Battle
Bears as they travel to a remote pink planet. The bears soon learn that
the planet is home to some of the galaxy’s most dangerous threats. The
bears will have to use their skills to save the day.

Here's some adulatory coverage from earlier this year by Channel 6, the Omaha NBC affiliate of Gray Television of Atlanta, which evasively explained that when you waste a pink bear, "colored stuffing" comes out.

Below is an uncritical profile of SkyVu Entertainment in Friday's Omaha World-Herald Money section featuring a grinning Vu holding toy incarnations of his pink bear villains while applying a little dynamic tension to the rainbow sash attached to the neck of one of them. What a cutup.

Does the fact that Jorge Pazos was respectful of his opponent, not homophobic, articulate and diplomatic mean that AKSARBENT won't twist his post-fight remarks into something undeservedly salacious? Nah. Unlike Pazos, we don't have any class at all.
Kudos to what's-his-name for being the first gay boxer to come out BEFORE retiring and all that, but we're just mesmerized merely watching his adorable, but straight, opponent walk through an airport. Pretty shallow, huh?

Saturday, October 20, 2012

O'Donnell's ramp-up to essentially calling Tag Romney a punk for saying he wanted to take a swing at President Obama was a revisitation of the glaring tradition of military nonservice of Mitt's grandfather, father, himself and his five sons.

OK Taggart. Let’s have a little talk, just you and me. You– When I hear you talk about taking a swing and taking punches, why do I get the feeling you have never actually taken a punch, or thrown a punch. I didn’t have that luxury in the part of Boston I grew up in. But in your rich, suburban, Boston life, with your father filling a $100 million trust fund for you. I don’t know, I just get the feeling things were kind of different for you. Now, I know you've got a lot to be pissed off at these days starting with the name Taggart which you have every right to be wicked pissed off at for every day of the 42 years of your life. So let me try to help you deal with all this aggression you are feeling right now.You’re mad at President Obama for calling your father a liar? Well, let’s get something straight. He didn’t call your father a liar, I did. The president just said that what father said isn't true. I’ve been saying all year that your father is a liar. I’ve repeatedly said that your father lies and is trying to lie his way into the White House. So, you want to take a swing at someone for calling your old man a liar? Take a swing at me. Come on. Come on! And don’t worry. There won’t be any Secret Service involved. Just us. And I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll come to you. Anytime, anywhere. Go ahead Taggart, take your best shot.

Google doesn't even let most of its own employees who don't work in one, much less the public, inside its data centers but it recently published photos by Connie Zhou of several of its off-limits facilities, including the $600 million Council Bluffs, IA location, which will soon be joined by a $300 million com­panion.

Deer who live near the cooling towers

Iowa's center is about 115,000 square feet

Plastic curtains corral refrigeration; the fiber in the yellow cable trays carries data back and forth to other Google centers about 200,000 times faster than an average home Internet connection

Nebraska GOP Rep. Lee Terry has been excusing all the pimping he does for Big Oil by talking incessantly about the need for US energy independence.
What he doesn't tell voters is that his cheerleading and strong-arm tactics in Congress on behalf of a foreign oil company — TransCanada — will actually jack up the cost of gas in Nebraska and the entire Midwest, but contribute almost nothing to US energy independence, since Keystone XL pipeline oil will flow to refineries in Houston, be refined and then get shipped off in tankers bound for the four corners of the world and the highest international bidders.

Currently, Canadian crude can be pumped only as far as the U.S.
Midwest, where a crude oil oversupply is keeping regional oil prices
low. The Keystone XL would clear that bottleneck, send Canadian oil to
the Gulf Coast and open access to world markets, creating a massive
business opportunity for tar sands players. "There's no ability to
access world markets, and that's the reason why WTI [Midwest oil
pricing] is depressed. Keystone XL will relieve that issue," said Chad
Friess, an oil and gas analyst at UBS Securities Canada Inc. in Calgary, Alberta. "Pricing is expected to improve as it comes on stream." A
2009 market analysis conducted for TransCanada, the Alberta-based
company that hopes to build the pipeline, projected that it would create
a $3 per-barrel increase, at minimum, for Canadian heavy crude in the
Midwest. Canada's petroleum producers would benefit most from the price
hike. The report predicts their annual revenues would increase $2
billion to $3.9 billion in 2013. But the entire industry—including the
refineries and shipping businesses where Koch Industries has
concentrated its efforts—would also profit.

In 2005, Judy Domina received a panicked call from her daughter. She needed to get her boys away from her husband who was abusing them. Judy drove without stopping to Iowa. She picked up her grandsons and brought them back to her home in Scotia. They had been severely abused, but Judy had taught children with special needs and had worked as an advocate for children and families; the boys couldn’t have had a better champion than a loving grandmother who knew the ins and outs of Nebraska’s health and human services. Still, Judy ran into roadblocks—and was shocked that even she was unable to navigate the system without help. She worried about her grandsons, but she also began to think of others: “If I can’t get services for these children, what is happening to the families who don’t know who to call or how to go about accessing these services?”
We sat drinking coffee in Judy’s kitchen, as she remembered it all. She seemed lost for a moment in the memory then shook her head. “I see myself as the candidate for the vulnerable,” she said finally. “I believe that in a nation as wonderful as the United States we need to make sure all of our citizens are taken care of.” This philosophy, she said, grew from her upbringing on a small farm in Oconto in Custer County. “In rural communities,” she explained, “if somebody has difficulty the neighbors wrap their arms around them, and come in and harvest their crops or make sure they have food.” That sense of communal effort—of pulling together for the common good—is something that Judy sees as a core value in Nebraska. And she believes that, even as more and more Nebraskans move to cities, she can help farmers and ranchers find shared purpose with their urban neighbors. That’s why Judy was shocked to see the behavior of her opponent Beau McCoy at a hearing before the Natural Resources Committee during last November’s special session on the Keystone XL pipeline. Many in the room felt that McCoy’s treatment of Robert Bernt, a Sandhills rancher who makes organic products in Spalding, crossed the line—ridiculing Bernt for erring on a matter of procedure, rather than listening to the substance of his testimony, to the point that Bernt eventually apologized for his “lower intelligence.” This is exactly the kind of excluding of constituent voices Judy would not tolerate. “No matter what my own personal opinions are,” she said, “I’m always going to be open to listening. I will work with my constituents to look at the facts together.”

In the last legislative session, Beau McCoy introduced LB912, Tennesee-style legislation that would have outlawed any municipal LGBT bias legislation in Nebraska by forbidding the protection of any class not specifically enumerated in state law. Brenda Council and Brad Ashford took a dim view of the proposed law and the way McCoy's bill would have let the state run roughshod over the freedom of local communities to decide this matter for themselves; they helped table it. The first person to testify for the law was Brian Babione, an ally of McCoy's from the radical right wing legal lobby, the Alliance Defense Fund, which is now calling itself the Alliance Defending Freedom. Here's video of Babione's Unicameral testimony. Be sure to watch the portion at the 1:30 mark to see just what kind of organizations Beau McCoy is in bed with.

The
new commercial, funded by the Maryland Marriage Alliance, shows footage
of Angela McCaskill, the diversity officer who was removed from her
post because she signed a petition to put the same-sex marriage law on
the November ballot.
"The video they are using, the ad, is actually copyrighted by us," said
Katherine Murphy, executive director of communications and public
relations at Gallaudet in Washington. "We're in touch with our attorneys
to have them follow up with the group to ask them to take down the ad." ...The ad was designed by Frank Schubert, a political consultant from
California who is heading anti-same-sex marriage campaigns in Maryland,
Maine, Minnesota and Washington state.

The Omaha World-Herald, whose tolerance of fast-and-loose-with-the-facts GOP ideology is high enough that it endorsed serial liar and flip-flopper Mitt Romney, has drawn the line at Rep. Lee Terrys latest excursion into political advertisement fiction.

...this
newspaper has supported Terry in each of those elections. But the
Republican congressman has demonstrated relatively little legislative
leadership during his time in the House, a period that included 10 years
of GOP majorities....After 14 years, it's time for a change. [John] Ewing has served as an
exemplary Douglas County treasurer, cleaning up a dysfunctional office
with customer service problems and which saw an embezzlement under his
predecessor... Ewing also deserves credit for stepping
forward and chairing the United Way of the Midlands committee... after the 2007 Von Maur
shootings. He used remarkable diplomacy and grace in overseeing the
handling of well over $1 million. Unlike the experiences in many other
locales, the Von Maur fund operated without lawsuits by potential
recipients or problems with Internal Revenue Service requirements... It is troubling that the Terry campaign,
with substantial leads in both opinion polls and fundraising, would have
resorted to misleading television commercials that required the
candidate to backtrack during Monday night's debate... ...it's unseemly behavior [Terry's misrepresentations] for a veteran congressman... We suggest that District 2 voters cast their ballot for John Ewing on Nov. 6.

Talking Points Memo reports that a 31-year-old Pennsylvania man, Colin Small, employed by Pinpoint, a company hired to register
voters on behalf of Republican
Party of Virgini,a was arrested by investigators from the Rockingham
County Sheriff’s office on Thursday and charged with destroying voter
registration forms.
Hutcheson’s office began investigating after the manager at a Tuesday Morning store in Harrisonburg, Va., allegedly spotted a man on Monday afternoon throwing eight voter registration forms into a dumpster behind the shopping center where he works.
A message left for a spokesman at the Virginia Republican Party was
not returned. A man who answered the phone at Pinpoint and only gave his
name as Ryan said he was not allowed to comment. “I really want to stay
out of it,” he said. Last month the GOP stopped all voter registration efforts in several critical swing states because of continued abuses by the firm it hired to conduct the efforts — a firm whose ethical lapses were so familiar to GOP officials that they advised the firm to change its name before hiring it.

Maynard (Bob "Gilligan's Island" Denver) slyly flashes a nipple to the CBS eye while trying to talk his best buddy Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hick­man) into taking off all his clothes. Whoever said 1950s television was a vast waste­land obviously didn't know where to look.